"It starts off intemperate, and just gets worse. "Smokers Are Scum, a gentle song" is just plain funny to people with a sense of humor"

I've a rollicking great sense of humour, but I don't find that song funny...I find it aggressive.

Smokers aren't scum.   

My father was a smoker. He smoked around me, as did my Mum, when both my brother and I were children. In those days, people didn't know how addictive or dangerous smoking was.

My dearest Dad was the gentlest of men....and to see those words upsets me very much.

As a child I never suffered any bad effects from smoke inhalation, despite 60 a day often being smoked by each parent..and my grandmother too, when she came to stay.

I feel that some of those facts on smoke and its effect on children are way over the top, actually. Yes, long-term smoking around children can affect some of them, but it doesn't affect every single child.

I actually think Smokers have now become the new Communists, preyed upon by neurotic people, made to stand outside in pubs...Sheesh! Just have a smoking room from heaven's sake! 'Non-Smokers Not Allowed' on the door should do the trick.

Also, it seems to me that someone on here, who admits to being a smoker seems far more the kind of person I'd prefer to be stranded on a desert island with...than others who claim to never smoke, because they seem far gentler and far more accepting of others than the up-their-own-arses-non-smokers.

My Uncle Grey used to smoke a pipe and a cigar now and then..OH, how I *loved* the smell of those cigars...and I'd sit and watch him load up his pipe, then bang it clean...He had a collection of them.

Auntie Eileen smoked like a chimney every day of her adult life, until she died in her late 80s. She was as fit as a fiddle all the way through.

My Dad, and Uncle Grey (not the one who smoked the pipe, he was married to Auntie Eileen....keep up!) ;0)....Uncle Grey who was my Dad's twin brother...well, they both got emphysema in the end..and it was pretty awful for them both. But it's strange, isn't it..how some can smoke all life long and it never affects them, and others can't.

Of course, drinking is a major problem these days, far more so than smoking, I'd say...Here in England, we have two generations who are well on their way to being alcoholics..and the National Health Service is FINALLY admitting it's being taken to the edge of bankruptcy because of it...but I don't hear the non-smoking drinkers complaining about that.

?????

Lizzie (A non-smoker)